Ski touring on the Aiguillas with four guides: rare conditions, warm sunshine and fresh powder through the vast Gourenq cirque!
When beauty comes to the garden… why look any further! L’Aiguillas, La Tête de Gaulent… Our local mountains… Etched into the collective consciousness of the people of Champcellou! The ones that, in winter, tell us the time and deprive us a little too early of the warmth of our favorite star! The ones that remind us that we’re right here, down below, and that up there, it’s far away!!
Obviously, when you live at the foot of a mountain like this and you’re a bit of a ski nut, the urge to ski down it comes naturally! But this mountain doesn’t give itself up easily… Between the vast avalanche-prone couloirs of the Gourenq—where the absence of larch trees attests to the frequent passage of moving snow masses—and the rocky summit exit, which requires good snow cover to ski down, the right conditions are pretty rare!
And then, one fine morning, just when we’ve almost stopped thinking about it, the mountain extends its invitation. The day has come!
A small team of four guides is thrown together. Some members of the rope team aren’t exactly at their best, but overall, the group is more or less functional! We all know that this kind of outing among fellow guides can, paradoxically, go south pretty quickly… An over-the-top sense of independence, unspoken tensions, unconscious competition, failure to follow instructions… The mix can sometimes be explosive, despite everyone’s skill level.
But none of that today—the atmosphere is healthy and relaxed. Those with enough lung capacity are joking around on the climb. Decisions are made smoothly. The snowpack is remarkably stable, following a period of about 20 centimeters of snowfall with no wind—which is quite rare!
And the climb to the summit—which looked a bit daunting from below—turned out to be pretty easy! Our four bodies, more or less worn out, come to rest up there under the spring sunshine… There’s no way we’re rushing back down right away: dressed lightly, we take in the panoramic view and the unbelievably mild weather that reigns in the mountains at the end of January.
We’ll be a little less polite about keeping the trail clear on the way down than we were on the way up. Fortunately, there’s more than enough room to feed the whole pack in this vast Gourenq cirque!
See the rest in pictures…
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